The US has joined Europe in fighting back against cheap Chinese textiles. It has gone beyond the EU’s current rather tight ban on a couple of product categories and has added four more categories to the products Washington announced on Friday would be subject to quotas.

New restrictions will be slapped on men’s and boys’ shirts in both cotton and manmade fibres, manmade fibre men’s trousers, manmade fibre blouses and women’s shirts and combed cotton fibre. France’s industry minister is currently touring Chinese factories, calculator in hand, to check out the prices.

His country is leading the counter-attack against Chinese imports some claim are being dumped at a loss to destroy Western manufacturers and capture the market.

These allegations are firmly denied by the Chinese. Its commerce minister insists all Beijing wants is fair international trade with rules applied equally. That is not how China’s competitors see the explosion in exports since the start of the year, as WTO membership for the Asian giant has scrapped quotas on its products from Seattle to Salonika.

With Chinese goods undercutting European and US products, sales have collapsed, factories are closing and people are losing their jobs.

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